Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing method and a storage medium, and in particular, to a technique to determine a communication method with a device connected to a network.
Description of the Related Art
In an office environment, a plurality of devices is connected to a network and many users use those devices. Devices include, for example, network equipment, such as a network printer. In such an environment, a setting and management of those devices are performed by an application intended for a manager (hereinafter, referred to as a management application) installed on a dedicated computer.
As a method of performing, by a management application, processing to acquire information and to change a setting for a specific device, there is a method that uses unicast communication. The unicast communication is a method of performing communication by specifying an IP address of a specific device. However, in the case where an invalid setting (e.g., a setting of a duplicate of an IP address) is set to a specific device, there is a possibility that a command for the specific device is transmitted to another device. As described above, with the method that uses unicast communication, it is not possible for a management application to perform bidirectional communication with a specific device, and therefore, there is a possibility that it is not possible to perform processing for the device.
In the case where a setting and management of a device are performed, there is a method that uses broadcast communication or multicast communication, besides unicast communication. Japanese Patent No. 5300562 has described the method of, in the case where a printer connected to a network is searched for again at the time of printing or at the time of acquisition of status, searching again by broadcast communication or unicast communication based on information indicating whether the printer can perform broadcast communication or can perform unicast communication.
However, the method that uses broadcast communication or multicast communication has such a problem that the amount of communication traffic becomes large. Depending on the scale of an office environment, there is a case where one hundred or more devices exist, and in the case where a setting and management of the devices are performed by using broadcast communication or multicast communication in such an environment, there is a possibility that an increase in communication traffic will result.
Consequently, in the case where a manager manages a device in an office environment, it is desired to suppress communication traffic by appropriately selecting a communication method with the device, not only to be capable of securely performing bidirectional communication with the device.